blocks nail gun

Orange light began to bathe the broken windows, highlighting the webwork of cracks in them. A lot of orange light.
“Crap,” I gasped. “I am not going to be known as the wizard who used his death curse thanks to a bunch of bitty nail guns.”
Then there was a very sinister sound.
Toward the rear of the Caddy, someone opened the lid to the fuel tank.
It wasn’t hard to work out what would happen next. Fire.
“Hell, no,” I said. I recovered the ball cap, turned a still-giggling Bob upside down, and then popped Toot into the skull. He sprawled in it, arms and legs sticking out, but he didn’t complain.
“Hey!” Bob protested.
“Serves you right, Giggles,” I snapped. I tucked the skull under my arm like a football.
I knew I didn’t have much of a chance of getting away from that swarm of fae piranha, but it was an infinitely larger chance than I would have if I stayed in the car and burned to death. Hell’s bells, what I wouldn’t give to have my shield bracelet. Or my old staff. I didn’t even have an umbrella.
I wasn’t sure how much more magic I had left in me, but I readied my shield spell, shaping it to surround me as I ran. I wouldn’t be able to hold it in place for long—but maybe if I got very, very lucky, I would survive the swarm long enough to find another option.
I took several sharp and completely not-panicked breaths, then piled out of the Cadillac, bringing my shield up with a shout of “Defendarius!”
The Little Folk started hitting my shield almost instantly. I once rode out a hailstorm in a dome-shaped Quonset hut made of corrugated steel. It sounded like that, only closer and a hell of a lot more lethal.
I went into a sprint. Between the still-present dust, the shroud of mist my leaf-blower spell had billowed forth, and the swarm of hostile fae, I could barely see. I picked a direction and ran. Ten steps. Twenty steps. The enemy continued pounding against the shield, and as I kept pouring my will into it to keep it in place, my body began to feel heavier and heavier.
Thirty steps—and I stepped into a small pothole in the sidewalk, stumbled, and fell.
Falling in a fight is generally bad. You tend not to get up again. I mean, there’s a reason that the phrase “He fell” was synonymous with death for a bunch of centuries.


Cold Days Chapter 12, Page 113-114